EKEN H8R Camera Review

A Practical Test With The EKEN H8R Camera

I work with a lot of action cameras on reality TV programmes that I film on. It is not uncommon to have a dozen or more GoPro’s running at any given time along with bigger broadcast cameras. I’m always looking for new mounts and new solutions to capture interesting and exciting angles of the people, locations, and machines that I work with.

Everbuying offered me a chance to try out the EKEN H8R camera and I knew I just had to take it for a spin. Everbuying are also offering Cinescopophilia readers a discount on the EKEN H8R camera.

Now I have a very specific need for action cameras. They are used in some of the harshest and hard to get to places in the Australian Outback, both on the ground and in the air. So the cameras I tend to use must have the small form factor of a GoPro, be water resistant, take the same mounts as a GoPro, and they have to perform in extreme temperatures, ranging from below 0 to above 40 degrees+ Celsius. The cameras need to operate in full sun and in changing light environments. So with those cavities in mind I tested the EKEN H8R camera by popping it on a car and filmed in conditions that would allow me to quickly see if it was up to the task of joining a reality TV series stable of action cameras.

I don’t need to film in 4K for these shows. Acquisition and delivery is in 1080p. So that’s what the EKEN H8R is set to for this test / review / look at. I may look at the 4K and time-lapse capabilities of the EKEN H8R later on.

So the footage is as is, straight from the camera’s sensor to the 32gig mini SD card. No colour correcting, cropping, or image stabilisation. Simply 30fps H.264 MOV EKEN H8R footage and the cameras audio cut with no music to it, so it can help you make your mind up if the camera is suited to your particular needs too.

Out of all the camera positions that I put the camera in, I dig the rear facing vision quality it produced. I think you can also see that the camera seemed to stop down a little too much at times in the bright conditions, but we’ll fix that in post as they say.

What may not be salvageable is the severe vignetting that occurred with the sun flaring into the lens. The small general lens flares didn’t concern me, but the low bright Autumn Queensland sun at times just ate into the image making footage unusable at times. I’ve reported this flare phenomenon to the makers.

Summing up: Not a bad camera overall, nice bang for buck. Battery life is about 1.5 hours to 2 hours. Handy to have the screen built in, and the fact that it can go into sleep mode after you check your shot, saves on battery life.
Menu settings are a bit like the GoPro ones: it takes a bit to get used to where they are.
I think it comes down to you just choosing where you want and need the the camera to go to get the right footage. For me I will be using it on a microphone boom pole filming backwards getting close vehicle to vehicle vision.